Osetew skw’áy kw’eset ew p’áth’et o qelát, x̲ét’e

“‘Osetew skw’áy kw’eset ew p’áth’et o qelát”, x̲ét’e. means “‘We just couldn’t sew it (up) again”, (he) said .

Pronunciation

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure

This phrase has the following structure:

Out of context, this sentence could be read as either present tense (‘can’t‘) or past tense (‘couldn’t). Both the past tense interpretation and ‘he‘ are just understood from context, as is common in the language.

Elders can express these past tense explicitly, and there is a word for ‘he’, but Elders often leave these for you to understand from context.